By Jonathan S. Tobin
Friday, March 23, 2018
The question was a reasonable one, but the answer was
not. When the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning
Joe program asked why President Trump had congratulated Russian president
Vladimir Putin on being reelected, former CIA director John Brennan pulled no
punches. In answering the leading question that implied Trump may be afraid of
Putin, Brennan said, “The Russians may have something on him personally.” The
Russians, he said, “have had long experience of Mr. Trump, and may have things
they could expose.”
Coming from just another foe of Trump — which Brennan, an
Obama loyalist, certainly is — the assertion could be dismissed as just a
partisan cheap shot. But coming as it did from a career intelligence officer
who served for four years as the head of the American intelligence
establishment, this had to be more than a baseless conjecture.
Except it wasn’t.
By the end of the day, Brennan admitted his wild charge
was not based on any actual information or intelligence revealed to him during
the course of his duties but just a willingness to assume the worst about
Trump. In a written response to questions from the New York Times, he said, “I do not know if the Russians have
something on Donald Trump that they could use as blackmail.”
In a world in which journalists treated unfounded
assumptions as just that, rather than headline news, Brennan’s charges would
have been dismissed. But though the Times
knew the accusation was baseless by the time it published its article on the
subject, the paper buried the lead. The headline on the story was “Ex-Chief of
the C.I.A. Suggests Putin May Have Compromising Information on Trump.”
Brennan’s walking back of his charge didn’t appear until the eleventh paragraph
of the story.
The point here is not just the decision of the editors of
the Times to downplay information
that undermined the entire story. Nor is it only that the rest of the
mainstream media played it the same way. In particular, the coverage on MSNBC
and CNN consisted of highlighting the accusation, treating it as a proven fact,
and then following up with panels in which others speculated as to what
evidence might substantiate Brennan’s charge, even though he had already
admitted he had no such information. This episode encapsulates most of the
media’s coverage of the entire Russian-collusion investigation over the last
year, in which speculation about Trump’s guilt is always assumed to be true
even if proof is never forthcoming.
The case of the Brennan smear is, however, instructive in
that it shows how coverage of Trump and Russia works. When Brennan spoke of the
Russians’ having something on Trump, not one member of the panel asked the former
Obama staffer whether his opinion was rooted in actual knowledge rather than
pure speculation. Nor did many others ask that question over the course of a
day in which Brennan’s comment was among the most discussed stories.
That fits a pattern that applies to every stage of the
Russian-collusion investigation.
More than a year into the Trump presidency and the
appointment of Robert Mueller to lead a special investigation into Russian
meddling in the 2016 election, information about the subject is still scarce.
Speculation about the dearth of knowledge regarding what happened or what
exactly Mueller has discovered is understandable. But in most of the media,
that lack of information hasn’t stopped both reporters and commentators from
jumping to conclusions about Trump’s being in big trouble every time even the
smallest tidbit about the probe is aired.
Until Mueller finishes his work and issues a report, we
won’t know what he has found. Like virtually every other special counsel, armed
with an unlimited budget and near plenary powers to chase down any potential
crime no matter how tenuous its link to his original brief, Mueller is taking
his time. But after his indictments of Russians for their activities, the only
crimes committed by Americans that he appears to have found get us nowhere near
a finding of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. While there
were scattered contacts, there is still no evidence they cooperated on
anything. At this point, and since the charges against the Russians were not
tied to those against Americans with whom they might have colluded, it is not
unreasonable to think that there may be none.
What we do know is that President Trump does appear to
have a soft spot for the Putin regime and seems unwilling to listen to the
counsel of those who urge him to be more guarded in his statements about the
subject.
Is that enough, as Brennan seems to think, to fuel a
charge that he might be under some sort of pressure from Russia?
The obvious answer is no. Trump has been consistent
throughout his campaign about believing in better relations with Russia and for
his lack of outrage about its foreign mischief making. This is a terrible idea,
as Moscow has proved time and again over the last year, since thwarting U.S.
interests is, along with reassembling the old Soviet empire, one of the
keynotes of Putin’s foreign policy.
Yet you don’t have to be a Russian agent of influence to
back policies or gestures that are favorable to Putin. After all, President
Obama made the same foolish gesture for which Trump has been lambasted this
week: calling to congratulate the authoritarian leader after winning a rigged
election in which his victory was foreordained. Obama began his first term with
a comical effort to “reset” relations and continued to defend Russia. He mocked
Mitt Romney for declaring Russia to be America’s prime geostrategic foe in
their 2012 foreign-policy debate, a stance that is Democratic-party orthodoxy
now that détente with Putin is identified with Trump. Just as bad, in an
infamous hot-mic moment, he told Putin’s puppet Dmitry Medvedev to tell
“Vladimir” that he could be more “flexible” in bowing to Russian demands after
he was reelected.
None of that constituted proof that Obama was in thrall
to Putin. His belief in showing weakness to Russia was sincere. But Trump’s
sporadic continuation of this imprudent policy — for which Brennan was at least
partially responsible — is assumed without proof as being prima facie evidence
of treason, even though Trump has also done some things, such as his arming of
Ukraine, to offend Putin.
Theoretically, Brennan could be right. But to assume
without proof that the only possible motive for a policy choice is a criminal
connection isn’t journalism. At best, it’s a highly partisan talking point. At
worst, it’s a smear.
It used to be that partisan assumptions fueled by pure
speculation and unaccompanied by proof didn’t pass the smell test at any major
network or newspaper. The fact that political smears of this sort have now
become not only possible but also normal says a lot about the way animus for
the Trump administration has distorted much of the media’s judgment and
coverage. If liberals want to know why conservatives no longer trust the media
about Trump even when the facts are on their side, they need look no further
than the way the media covered Brennan’s unfounded accusation.
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